Bell’s has been my gateway to a tough health year, no doubt. Maybe it should be so surprising to me how one thing cascades to another. I’ve now got three things in various stages of healing. (Prior to which, I felt healthier than ever before)
Yes, at the end of five months, the BP has improved noticeably. My speech is probably 85-90% returned; today it sounds better than it is, I think, because of my adjustments and compensation. In my life of speaking and singing, I tend to over-enunciate already, so the remaining impediment from BP is largely masked. Sandwich eating is easier – though I tend to eat things that don’t stretch my mouth. Chewing is much easier; less incidental, internal self-chewing.
My left eye closes….almost. I generally have stopped taping my eye at night. A not-all-that-funny thing happened a few weeks ago regarding my eye that changed the direction of my short-term health. It became the second health thing to deal with. While visiting the ophthalmologist for a follow-up eye-exam (my eye seemed improved enough), she looked me over. Things were OK, generally, it was noted, but my affected eye was determined to be really dry. (Keratitis Sicca) Now, my Ophthalmologist is awesome and gracious and saw me ASAP when I contacted her back in February. Her advice then: Moisturize, Moisturize and Moisturize. I did a decent job, I thought. I taped it every night with moisturizer inside, plus drops during the day. But, I guess my diligence trailed off since things seemed to feel ok. Lesson learned: Keep with the drops even if you don’t think you need them. Because: you do need them. So, on this follow-up visit, she mentioned I was a good candidate for a fairly new procedure: Amniotic Membrane Transplantation.
Basically, it’s like a contact lens of membrane that gets placed on the affected eye. Over the course of about four days, this will merge into your own eye, giving it a much needed drink of water and nutrients to help repair the damage. At the time of the procedure, a clear disk, like a blank contact lens gets placed atop of the membrane lens to protect it for the next few days. Out patient procedure that lasts twenty minutes. I felt like a cyborg or that I was in The Matrix.
By the end of the day, my eye still felt irritated. So, instead of coming in on Monday to check on it, I came in the very next day, Friday. I was told the worse was over, but to see how I feel. The rest of the day, and into early evening, it became excruciating. Fortunately, I was able to be in touch with my Ophthalmologist who reached out to her community, too. Bottom line: there’s a 7 to 8% failure rate on this procedures. And, my body rejected this alien intruder. Ripping the disks out of my eye was a helluva lot more painful than I thought. (The membrane plus the protective, clear lens on top) I got some drops, and slept poorly that night. I’ve never had an issue with my eye, but the good news is that the pain was short-lived. I still visited her on Monday and got even more drops. Fast-forward a few weeks, and my eye is fine….if still kind of dry.
The third thing, health-wise, that has been an issue the last few weeks has nothing whatsoever to do with BP. But, it still hampers me. I aggravated a fairly minor knee injury from maybe eight years ago. It was a perfect storm of shooting a video for four hours of many different people; driving a lot; working out my legs; driving more; sitting in a theatre for three hours for a play; and walking around a lot. All within about twelve to fifteen hours. By the end of that day, I was limping. Next day, I did more walking. And limping. Went to acupuncture for me BP and asked them to look at my knee, too. Visited my chiropractor right after and got e-stimulation for the muscle. This started June 2, and now, here it’s the 30th: still limping. Yikes. I believe that the re-injury was a perfect storm of all that activity combined without rest. I try to rest it, ice it, elevate it and lately, compress it. R.I.C.E. All of a sudden, it seems like I’m twice as old as I thought I was. Numbers like these don’t mean much to me, but damn!
So, here it is, the last day of June. After seeing the chiropractor several times and feeling a lot better after each visit, I gave it a rest. Tried more RICE; and began to swim a lot more than I have. Aqua therapy feels good. I’m stretching and moving it in a way that increasingly feels great. Last night, swimming made my left feel better than it has all month. This morning, it’s early, but I’m limping less.
I’m still adhering to the recommended supplements and dietary modifications recommended to me by the Nutrition Response Test completed in February. That hasn’t been too challenging. Seems to be helping.
The scoreboard reads: BP is getting better, if the more obvious recovery has flattened out; Dry Eye has recovered from the procedure and I don’t think the worse for wear; Knee is still swollen but has much better mobility, less pain. Still, I don’t feel like an Alien. In fact, I feel all-too-human.